Regarding popular usage of the term "gnome3", I think it should refer to gnome-shell desktop, as it is the "defining technology of the GNOME3 user experience". When you use the term "GNOME3", without further explanation, the default desktop you are using is should be gnome-shell. Anything else is not distributed or provided by GNOME.

Unity, cinnamon, consort, etc, may all be built on GNOME3, but only in the sense of shared applications or libraries. The core user or desktop experience is something different, and not GNOME in the sense of the desktop environment it provides. I don't think it makes sense to call these other desktops GNOME3 since they've removed the core technology of what the GNOME3 experience is.

It just adds confusion, though. Gnome has given a specific name to the shell, might as well use that when talking about it. And you might use default out of the box Gnome 3, but log into a classic session, in which case you are using Gnome 3 certainly, but not Gnome Shell.

Thank you for this thread. That’s all I can say. You most definitely have made this forum into something special. You clearly know what you are doing, you’ve covered so many bases. Thanks!

Perhaps. There is the differentiation between the GNOME3 base of libraries and applications (and desktops build from that); and the actual desktop environment provided under the GNOME brand. But as they say life is too short to care about trivial details like this.

i did not install gnome onto cinnamon or onto unity. I installed it on a clean mate edition that had no gnome on it. it is to my knowledge the default classic gnome3 desktop enviroment complete. or am i wrong ?

And yes i have quite alot of extensions installed, the extensions is what makes gnome, its same as firefox, without extensions its the worst browser in the world, but add few extensions and its a master piece...

I think im going to make a better video, more in depth about mate, compiz, gnome, cinnamon etc etc and compare them all.

Cinnamon is not bad, but it is not without bugs either. I run a laptop with a Core I5 2.67ghz ( turbo boost to 2.93ghz), 2 cores, 4 threads, 17" display, 6GB Ram, ATI 5650 1GB dedicated Gfx card. it can play any game that is available, run maya, autocad, blender, Daz studio, photoshop and all the other utilities i use without problems. So its not my fault that cinnamon has glitches with this GFX card, it is a bug that was around in mint13 as well and still is not fixed. I had a nvidia card with my old PC, and i had endless issues with having to edit the xorg file to get that working, hence i rather went ATI route, and now i find it has issues with ATI too. Gnome3 runs out the box, without issues...

I've been trying lots of distros lately (openSUSE, Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.), and I have installed gnome shell on a few of them. AFAIK all of the distros' Gnome Shell packages are called "gnome-shell" (although I believe arch has a group called "gnome", but I think gnome-shell is still a package), so I think gnome shell is the appropriate term, especially when considering how Gnome 3 without the shell is used in Cinnamon, Gnome Classic, Consort, etc. As for using it, the last time I gave it a big try was on Ubuntu 12.04 with Gnome 3.4 right after 12.04 was released (and I used it for at least a week non-stop). I've tried Gnome Shell 3.6 in Fedora and 3.4 in Debian (which I also have installed right now, but I don't use it). I find 3.4 to be solid and, while I prefer Cinnamon and Xfce, I find it very usable. 3.6 seems to be less functional and intuitive, although I haven't given it a fair shot (I've only tried it briefly). Personally I see no improvements in 3.6 that particularly interest me, and it has gotten worse in some areas (I'm thinking nautilus specifically). Distros that I actually install are mostly Debian based (and 3.6 is still in experimental and will be for a while), and I keep a Mint LTS for steam and netflix. None of these distros have 3.6 yet, so I can't try it as thoroughly as 3.4.

yip saw that and i tried some of the aplets, quite impressive considering how new cinnamon still is. but my problem still exists, i cannot autohide the bottom panel ( and i cant work with it not hidden ). if i auto hide it and mouse over to bring it up there is some really ugly tearing that happens on screen, i have tried tweaks in catalyst panel, tried all the different drivers including ones from ati site. nothing works. So until that is fixed i cant run Cinnamon i found many topics on the issue and so far no one has a solution, i have even tried editing files as possible fixes suggested, none of that worked either.

But i am happy with how my Gnome3 is setup, i have changed it again since i posted that clip, i think i have it feeling nice and comfortable now so for time being im good, ill check cinnamon on version 15 again

Im gonna make a new vid clip of how it looks now, just to shows how much it can be changed with simple few clicks

"Auto-hide panel" works outa box here. But if you think its a bug report at https://launchpad.net/. I think they should include an "intellihide" option just like in cairo dock!! IIt would be great I think BTW since you are anew user I think you should know of http://linuxmint-art.org/

new clip is here, its a much more standard look, just tweaked a bit to make it feel more "windows like". But can you see how different the 2 clips look from just a few tweaks ?

its a pitty VLC doesnt show the mouse while recording, but keep your eyes on the bottom panel, you will see the mouse over highlights alot in this clip, specialy when alot of previews are flashing across the screen.